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The History Of Flashbacks In Cinema
By Apu Fergamas
Quentin Tarantino is well known for his complex style of filmmaking, Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs, that uses flashbacks and flash forwards and a technique of interweaving of story lines. However, this is not a novelty, it’s merely a fresh look at a previously done and redone method that has finally found a niche in the broader audiences. Alain Resnais, one of the great results of the French wave, reused this "broken technique" in such masterpieces as Mon Uncle D’Amerique and Last Year in Marienbad.
There are a few films in the history of cinema that one could say have truly set a milestone and an example for thousands of other films to follow and learn from. "The Searchers" was the first film by John Ford to set an example in unconventional narrative in a film. Another such film is" The Godfather II" that continued that tradition of broken narrative by going back and forth in time.
Rashomon used the back and forth in an ingenious way to recount events that appear differently every time told by a different person. The whole film revolved around one scene that continuously changed as it was filtered through different perspectives and recounted in a new way. The Sixth Sense also did this nicely by utilizing the "flashback flashforward" and broken time frame technique in a very interesting manner considering that it is all done in the audience’s head. At the end of the film, when the twist is revealed, the audience flashes back in their own heads and references the key clues that were left behind.
Memento broke the narrative conventions by completely flipping the A-Z narrative upside down and starting at the end and making it way to the beginning. The most recent innovation that will begin a new trend of filmmaker is used in the new "Quentin Tarantino-esque" film The Machiavelli Hangman (http://www.hangmanmovie.com).
So many of these structural techniques have been used over and over that one would wonder just how original this new filmmaking technique would be. The Machiavelli Hangman’s ingenious... Machiavelli Hangman could only be described as a Rubik’s Cube that weaves in and out of 3 time frames and 4 locations and in the end, manages to connect all the same colors together and make perfect sense.
Machiavelli Hangman’s original approach is not so much in its ability to weave in and out of time frames, but the fact that it does so without the audience realizing that there has been a change of location and time half the time. This misleads the audience until they are surprised by the fact that they didn’t see it coming. It’s a lot like closing your eyes while you’re inside your room, and opening them again to find that you’re standing near the ocean.
And the fact that it has comedic elements would also appear to the larger audiences, rather than just the art crowds. Finally, audiences are growing more intelligent and there are products out there to satisfy those hungry minds.
About the Author
Apu Fergamas is an movie photojournalist based in Los Angeles. As Apu revealed the history of the cinema, Apu’s intent was to give you a head’s up on the soon to be released movie, Machiavelli Hangman: http://www.hangmanmovie.com
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/6337.html
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